As expected, the Israeli media haven’t passed up the opportunity to dance on the grave of Vittorio Arrigoni, the activist in the International Solidarity Movement who was murdered in Gaza last week. No one will say a thing about the real causes of this vile murder.

At Ynet they decided to exploit the opportunity to publish a scare piece about the Salafist organizations in Gaza. Dan Margalit went further, in his rush to put out a accusatory article in which he called Vittorio a “crude anti-Semitic propagandist.” In closing, Margalit wrote: “But the main point is not Arrigoni, but what is happening in Gaza. His killing, like the resumption of rocket attacks suggests that with respect to government, the strip has become a no-man’s land.” To translate: We need to impose order on Gaza. Get ready for another round of carpet bombing.

It is doubtful that Margalit has any idea who the man really was. And I doubt that he cares. Jeff Halper’s eulogy reveals the image of a brave man who risked his life in order to protect the Gazan fishermen whose livelihood and even lives were imperiled by the Israeli occupation. As far as Margalit is concerned, this constitutes “support for terror.”

The eulogy brings up a different act of terror, one that Dan Margalit is not prepared to condemn, which occurred exactly two years ago: the killing of Bassam Abu Rahma by the occupation army in Bil’in.

Margalit will not contemplate the link between these events. He can’t fathom that his country, that murdered Bassam Abu Rahma, his sister Jawahar, Rachel Corrie, nine participants in the solidarity flotilla to Gaza, and many others that dared to oppose the continuing terror that it inflicts on the territories, operates according to the same methods as Vittorio’s murderers.

We won’t get an explanation for the murder from Margalit. He won’t say a word about the hardships of the fishermen that Vittorio aided, because they are themselves terrorists in his eyes. Neither will he say a word about the siege on Gaza. For him it is almost certainly a legitimate means of wielding pressure on the “terror government.” He won’t bother himself to learn who is hurt and who benefits from the siege. He has no interest in the analysis that shows that the siege on Gaza hurts the civilian population but not the armed groups.

Palestinian society has reached the limits of its ability to endure after almost 44 years of occupation and almost four years of siege. It is a crumbling society, suffering severe hardships, which lead some to desperate solutions involving the murder of solidarity activists or actions against civilians.

The solution for this society will not come from another siege or another massacre. Whatever hope remains comes from its youth, most of whom, according to a recent study, have lost faith in the existing parties, and are looking for civil society organizations and a new party to represent them.